A New Season, Another Manning Record

If there’s anything that would made this Fixer stay up past midnight on a weekday, it’s the NFL season opener. (Or a “Storage Wars” marathon, probably.) Thursday night’s season kickoff between the Denver Broncos and Baltimore Ravens was nearly an all-time classic after Baltimore started the process of what would’ve been their second cataclysmic embarrassment of Denver in as many games, dating back to last year’s playoffs. Fortunately, Danny Trevathan’s end zone goof ended up not mattering as Peyton Manning stabilized a shaky ship, throwing for seven touchdowns.

It’s a tally that only gets more impressive when you consider the context. The Ravens, despite losing a good chunk of their defensive personnel, still shouldn’t be a team that gives up nearly 50 points. “A 37-year-old quarterback should not be able to do what Manning did to the Ravens. A 27-year-old shouldn’t either. It seems just about impossible,” writes Yahoo’s Frank Schwab. “He finished second in the NFL MVP voting last season, and given the Broncos’ uptempo offense, the addition of Wes Welker and the emergence of tight end Julius Thomas, he has a great chance to win his fifth MVP award this season. At an age when he should be easing into retirement, he just had one of the greatest games in the history of the league.” With ability like that, who cares if anyone gets it wrong?

Thursday night was just a taste, of course. This Sunday sees a full slate of games welcoming us to the inaugural madness in which teams figure out their depth charts in real situations, preseason predictions are swiftly upended, random injuries are parceled out like sucker punches in dark alleys, cable feeds are cursed for their inconsistency, and roughly 17,000 buffalo wings per fan are consumed. It’s a blast, even if we don’t get to boo Ryan Seacrest anymore. After months of speculating about how this signing will change Team X or how player Y’s ability has been improved by the addition of skill Z, it’s nice to see all of it thrown into the wind like confetti. “All of this is very liberating as a fan. I’m an idiot! Who knows why anything happens? Every NFL play is a clusterf— of 22 different violent and totally mad decisions! Wheeeeee!” writes Sports on Earth’s Jeb Lund. “Add potential bizarre or unfortunate circumstances that can upend an entire season, like an injury to Aaron Rodgers or Colin Kaepernick, and we have no idea what will happen in a macro or micro sense. Throw in players like Chris Johnson in 2009 — who suddenly become insanely great for what ostensibly looks like they just felt like it — and NFL Week One is a masterpiece of not knowing why anything is happening.”

As random as it seems, there’s plenty we can look forward to checking out. There’s the return of Sean Payton in New Orleans after a year-long suspension, where he’ll try to counter the conventional wisdom saying that the Atlanta Falcons are now the NFC South’s cock of the block. Over in San Francisco, the 49ers host the Packers in a playoff rematch that should test Green Bay’s capacity for adjusting to the read option… or collapse completely under the brunt of a new era. A rule change may make it easier for the Packers to do so, and help prevent the read option from becoming a league standard. (The Manning brothers just breathed a sigh of relief.) “The NFL didn’t let defenders hit quarterbacks freely when they held the ball in a running back’s gut last year; this year, a QB with his hands on the ball in read-option mode is fair game,” writes Monday Morning Quarterback’s Peter King. “I believe defensive players will attack the quarterback more, even if they incur an unnecessary roughness penalty or three along the way.”

The Chicago Bears will show off an offense resculpted by rookie coach Marc Trestman, who’s spent a bunch of years in the CFL refining unconventional ways to get ahead. The New England Patriots will humor Buffalo rookie quarterback’s E.J. Manuel’s NFL debut, and probably drop 100 points on a pockmarked Bills defense. Adrian Peterson will begin his road toward 2,500 yards; the Seattle Seahawks will begin the year as a Super Bowl favorite; Robert Griffin III will finally get to show off his surgically reconstructed knee on a hopefully improved field. You get the idea: We’re excited. We would probably watch Kansas City-Jacksonville if left with nothing else, which says a lot. Despite the lingering hangover of an unsatisfactory concussion settlement, the NFL is back and strong as it ever is. The buffalo wings are already marinating.

SPORTS, THE JOURNAL WAY

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